One man's trash is another man's....still trash
A big problem with anyone wanting to bring a camp tragicomedy to Chicago from anywhere (in this case, Playwright Johnny Drago's hometown of Atlanta) is this: they'll have to compete with our own hometown heroines from Hell in a Handbag. It's not particularly fair to compare, but given the setup-"The Glass Menagerie meets Anna Nicole Smith"- I couldn't help but feel that those crazy campers up north would have handled this Midwest debut more deftly.
Next up is his grandma, known as "Othermomma" (Carrie Campana), an acerbic, wheelchair-bound conspiracy theorist who runs the roost. "Smudge" (Caitlin Jackson) emerges from a trash heap as if she were a homeless person living within her own home. She's the youngest, unaware of her own age and afflicted with a unibrow to make Frida Kahlo wince.
Rumbles from the bedroom inform all that the great and terrible Jinx Malibu herself (Anthony Whitaker in drag) is about to rise. She makes her presence known with cryptic cries of "Slimtastic, yeah!" Jinx is revealed to be Rocketpussy herself, now living in the epilogue of her titty-based 'career' in squalor. Her Slimtastic hailing call harkens back to an infomercial her buxom bosom once secured and the ensuing lifetime supply. Like the diet drugs in "Requiem for a Dream," it is heavily implied that Slimtastic is some kind of methamphetamine. Othermomma controls her daughter by controlling the dosage.
This tableau of dysfunction is about to be interrupted by a sound so rare Smudge doesn't know what it is-the doorbell. A young blogger of the Perez Hilton variety (Jamal Howard) has tracked down the reclusive cult figure of Jinx with the hopes of doing a little tawdry writeup on a camp superstar who might have been offered a John Waters gig in her heyday. Allusions assure us that the Rocketpussy trilogy have achieved Midnight Movie status on par with Rocky Horror. Of course, the stunted and distorted people within the heap think he's a big shot Hollywood producer, insisting on referring to the incredulous young man as "Mr. Hollywood" and waiting for him to begin Jinx's big Rocketpussy comeback. They are not even aware that most of the world suspects she died in a Pop Rocks factory explosion.
When a storm ensures that the panicked purveyor of perfidy is unable to leave, he finds himself trapped in the walls of a madhouse to witness the tragic spectacle of a command performance of Rocketpussy's newest adventure.
Trash runs like an extended riff on the tropes of Southern Gothic. Drago's characters feel like an inverted and exaggerated caricature of some denizens of a Tennessee Williams work, though Jinx's arc most closely resembles Norma Desmond of Sunset Boulevard fame. There are glimpses of gutter poetry peeping up throughout the script, commenting on the fleeting nature of even the slimmest threads of fame. Relating her dream of a small man living within the lettuce of her Wendy's cheeseburger ("Homunculus," Smudge informs, clearly learning much from her correspondence mail courses), Jinx remarks that his cries are familiar, as "everyone's who's trapped has the same thing to say..."
At first, "Mr. Hollywood" as a dramatic pivot seems less than spectacular, embodying none of the intrigue and guile of stardom that would enrapture these hillbillies. Then it occurred to me that his paltry offerings of alienated Twitter followers and celebrity photographs with "Poot" drawn on their butts was the best that Hollywood has to offer now. The Malibu family's idolatry is all the more tragic for the sheer gulf between dream and reality. We experience their deflation.
Smudge emerges as the sensitive soul à la Laura Wingfield, bonding with Mr. Hollywood as the only stranger she's ever met. Here the show takes a turn for the very dark, on par with the end of . This eye-poppingly jarring shift in tone is the production's biggest problem. A dark comedy isn't a show that turns from comedy into darkness but one that finds dry humor embedded in tragedy. A brisker pace and more judicious editing from Director Derek Van Barhamwould help gloss over the weaker moments, some tiresome running gags and some shallow characterizations that pad out the 2+ hour runtime.
The overall mello-yello-dramatic tone is handled quite well by the cast, particularly Whitaker him(her)self, who has plenty of plum one-liners, though all the insights are reserved for those in her orbit. Jackson gets the most poetry as she describes a letter from her long absent father, who has inhabited a litany of absurd jobs while never returning to his daughter. These heartfelt meditations on the nature of human connection and our desire to cling to dreams over reality come out of left field in a play that's established itself as flippant, but they are poignant nonetheless.
It's in that second act that a sense that Drago has some sympathy for his own creations and that this isn't a mean-spirited look at deluded hicks. I wish that sensibility had run more throughout, as that's one of the things that makes anything Handbag does better than your average camp tribute-an underlying sense that as much as they poke fun, they really love their sources. But now I know who to call if the president is ever tied to a rocket bound for Mars.
continues through May 15th at The Den Theatre, 1333 N. Milwaukee (map), with performances Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30pm, Sundays 6pm. Tickets are $20 (seniors/students: $15), and are available by phone (800-838-3006) or online at BrownPaperTickets.com (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com ). More info at NewAmericanFolkTheatre.org. (Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes, includes an intermission)
Photos by Paul Clark
behind the scenes
Derek Van Barham (director), Clint Greene (scenic design), Kate Setzer Kamphausen (costume design), (lighting design), Kallie Rolison (sound design), Eric Shoemaker (props design), Julie Leghorn (stage manager), Paul Clark (photos)
Tags: 16-0422, Anthony Whitaker, Caitlin Jackson, Carrie Campana, Chicago Theater, Clint Greene, Clint May, Cody Ryan, Derek Van Barham, Eric Shoemaker, Jamal Howard, Johnny Drago, Julie Leghorn, Kallie Rolison, Kate Setzer Kamphausen, Kirk Jackson, New American Folk Theatre, Paul Clark, post, The Den Theatre
Category: 2016 Reviews, Clint May, Den Theatre, New American Folk Theatre
